Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab

 Recommended settings for cutting various kinds of paper:

• 100lb paper:
  • Chris:
    Power of 5%-10%
    Speed 100%
    Freq 500+
    The real settings that mattered were speed/frequency. Since any power will blast through, the size and spacing of the holes it's punching are primary.  If it doesn't cut, up the freq and/or slow the speed. If it burns, lower the power or up the speed
  • Jonathan: I use 85/50/500 for my polyhedra models, but that is with (typically) 100lb+ paper (bristol board). The power is probably excessive, and as Chris says you can lower that a lot.
• 65lb paper :
  
  • Chris:
    Power of 2%
    Speed 100%
    Freq 500+
    The paper I was using was 65lbs. So you might need a bit more power, but the power isn't that important. I found that the paper is so thin it's hard not to cut it. 2% power was all it took.
  • Jonathan:  I use 85/50/500 for my polyhedra models, but that is with (typically) 100lb+ paper (bristol board).  The power is probably excessive, and as Chris says you can lower that a lot.

Making dashed lines:

• Jonathan: You can get dashed lines by using 50 frequency and 100 speed (I think Chris discovered this and told me).  You can change that somewhat to get shorter or longer dashes (though the ratio between line and space stays constant).
• Chris:  Yes, putting the speed as fast as it can go and the freq as low as it can go makes a lovely dotted line. The dots get closer as the freq goes up.
• Jonathan: Unfortunately, a dashed line in Inkscape is printed as a full vector line with a style.  The laser cutter picks up on the vector line, and ignores the style.  Dashed lines are cut over the full length.

Other notes:

• Jonathan: There is paper you can get where the ash is white, rather than black or grey.  I can't find the reference right now, but I think it might be bamboo paper.  It is definitely a non-wood fiber paper.